A little more than a year ago two letters appeared in the Valley News on the subject of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). One, by Gary Richardson, a Republican, complained that in Vermont, the fact that Progressives prefer Democrats to Republicans, and Democrats prefer Republicans to Progressives, if in an election under IRV the Republicans got the most votes but not quite a majority, they would lose, and that would be unfair. We’ll look at this idea later.

The other, by Marge Gaskins, talked about how wonderful IRV is because it

(1) the winner is selected by a majority of the voters,

(2) the system significantly reduces the instance of wasted votes,

(3) it reduces the need for people to distort their preferences when their preferred candidate has little chance to win,

(4) it avoids spoilers, and

(5) it allows voters to express their evaluation of the candidates more completely than we can now where we each votes for one candidate and the candidate with the largest plurality wins.

We’ll examine some of these claims.